This invention relates to a parlor game played by two or more participants.
The invention consists of a method of stacking and re-stacking playing pieces in a free-form board game that can be played without turns.
In U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,585, issued Jun. 26, 1990, Looney and Cooper teach a method of manipulating and interpreting playing pieces that permits simultaneous play by all participants and which requires no game board, only a few minor delineations of the playing field. The game was called Icehouse, and in the preferred embodiment, it was played with small pyramids of 3 sizes, 15 per player as depicted in FIG. 2 of their patent.
In the ten years since that patent was issued, game sets embodying this invention have been sporadically published and sold by the inventors. However, even though the original game has developed a certain dedicated following, it has a number of flaws that have driven the inventors to develop other games that can also be played with the game pieces described in their patent. Many such games have since been invented, but most of them invoke additional equipment, such as a chessboard, playing cards of various types, or dice. Few of these newer games have held to the elegance of employing no other equipment, and thus being playable on any available flat surface. Most importantly, none of these other games have permitted simultaneous play by all participants, as seen in the original game described in the Looney/Cooper patent.
In addition, prior to this invention, all Icehouse sets featured solid pyramidal game pieces, as depicted in FIG. 1 of U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,585. This was always considered the optimal form of the playing piece, since a weightier game piece is more tactilely satisfying and less prone to jostled placement than a lightweight, hollow piece would be.
The issue of jostled placement is one of the design flaws in the original game. Due to the precision alignment of pieces on the playing field required by that method, a bump of the table or a collision of pieces during play could easily, and unfairly, alter the course of the game. Rules were devised to counter this factor, but these often just put clumsy players (i.e. those without good hand-eye coordination) at an even greater disadvantage. Moreover, even a fairly small jostling of pieces could be uncorrectable, forcing a premature end to the entire game.
Other factors as well made Icehouse an imperfect embodiment of the original vision of a free-form, simultaneous-play abstract strategy game. While the delineations of the playing area were fairly minimal, they were not non-existent; this made additional equipment necessary, in the form of markers, depicted as item 22 in FIG. 2 of U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,585. This solution was not only inelegant but also the cause of numerous disputes over questionably legal plays. The abuse potential of some of these rules necessitated a special section in the game instructions that branded deliberate exploitation of loopholes xe2x80x9cuncoolxe2x80x9d and extolled the virtues of xe2x80x9ccoolxe2x80x9d playing styles instead. Finally, the scoring system was complex and error-prone. All of these factors combined to make the game described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,936,585 an unlikely candidate for widespread commercial success, despite its fascinating and unique mechanisms.
This invention is an improvement over the prior art in several important ways. It begins with a redesigned game piece, one with the same outer dimensions (therefore being compatible with existing game sets), but hollow, with an opened base. Ideally, the walls will be of sufficient thickness to provide adequate piece heft while also being thin enough to allow several pieces of different sizes to fully nest, one within the next, like a set of Matryoshka (Russian stacking dolls). When the pieces are instead stacked up, with equal or smaller sized pieces only being played on top of other pieces, they will form into towers in which each piece in the stack can easily be seen and identified. This stacking structure, made possible by the described improvement to the game piece, provides the basis for a fast and exciting strategy game when combined with the method of play contained in this invention.
This game has been given the name IceTowers. While bearing little resemblance to the original game Icehouse, this new game improves on its predecessor in many ways: it is easier to learn and faster to play; it uses a truly free-form playing field, eliminating the need for xe2x80x9cunplayed piecexe2x80x9d areas by putting all pieces into play at all times; when accidents do happen, recovery is much easier than in the original game, eliminating the need for punishment of clumsy players; precise placement of pieces too has been removed as a factor; calculating the score at the end is comparatively easy and mistake-proof; there are fewer loopholes to exploit, and fewer rules in general to learn; and yet, it still manages to provide the same sort of real-time strategy game thrills that made the original game so compelling.
In this invention, each player is assigned a multiplicity of playing pieces which are distinguishable in color, composition, or external markings, or in some other visual manner, from the playing pieces of his or her opponents. The playing pieces will be of varying but similar appearances, preferably pyramids or cones of several different sizes. The size differences within color groups will be used as the basis for awarding points for pieces controlled at game""s end, with markings on the pieces being used to remind players of these point values; but other point-assignment means could be used as well. The pieces will have an opening at their base such that each may be stacked on top of one another, with larger pieces preferably being able to completely enclose smaller pieces, but with multiple stacked pieces forming into towers, with each piece visible, whenever pieces are stacked only onto other equal or larger-sized pieces.
The playing area will be a featureless open field. Setting up the game is as simple as scattering the pieces onto the playing area and standing them all upright where they lie. Each player is then assigned all pieces of a particular color (or other visual distinction), and upon a mutually agreed upon signal, the game begins.
The game is played by allowing all participants to interact with the playing pieces in any of several different ways, as restricted by the game""s rules, at the same time as the other players but moving at whatever rate of play the individual player chooses. The methods of interaction, which will be referred to by the names Capping, Mining, and Splitting, will cause the individually placed game pieces to form into a set of towers, of an unpredictable number and of varying heights. The game will continue until no more interactions are possible under the rules of play, or until all players agree no more changes will be made to the current configuration of game pieces. Points are then awarded to each player, as determined by the assigned values of the pieces in all towers controlled by each player, where control of a tower is determined by the color of the piece on top of the tower. The winner will be the player with the highest total score.